DL:CAD by Gad [looking glass]

Maria Alice:

I'm pleased to have found your web pages; but does the English flag ever
produce English captions on the other pages? (I haven't looked through
those yet; they take a long time to download).

Your comments on drawing, Maria Alice, make me know that what I say is
shouting into the wind. Especially during these days of glamorous PC
software and the promise of easy success. I guess most people go on
believing the lies which open every CD I have bought: This software is
easy to use; it makes dinner, feeds the baby, and lights good Habanas
with brandy afterward.
If you are into believing the burps and belches which come to us in this
sound bite age, then you (I mean all of us who want to learn to design,
not you in particular, Maria Alice) are in trouble.

I steadfastly maintain that Steve profited from a studio system which at
Temple grew out of the Beaux Art model not much before WWII, and may
have still had one foot in that grave until the '50s. Being so, Steve
seems unaware how much he profited from pre modernist method. And even
after Modernism moved into schools (mostly after WWII in the US),
architectural pedagogy was still able to take advantage of the old
system. This has been the case, decreasingly so, up until the decade of
the '90s.
What is happening now is that more and more teachers are allowing CAD in
the earlier stages of design, and all I can do is tell you (all of you
who feel they are still learning design) that the more that CAD takes
the place of FREE HAND DRAWING, that much LESS, on average, should each
each basic design student expect to become master of the architectural
design process.

Steve speaks from his personal experience as a student of design, but
teacher of CAD. He claims to have no idea how much harm it does (on
average, not individually) to bypass FREE HAND DRAWING.
Contrarily, my experience comes from seeing it both ways. After
considerable experiment, I now allow Upper classes to use CAD after
developing their FREE HAND partis. Anyone who avoids this approach by
doing hard line drawings OF partis (much less CAD), will, on average,
turn out stilted work. Thats the way it has been all along. If Steve had
no FREE HAND DRAWING, and never uses it now, if he designs his partis
and composes his paintings on CAD, then all I can say is that here is
your exception. (But I don't believe it! His work just doesn't seem that
hard edged.) When he thinks about it, I believe he will remember taking
advantage of the remaining mixture of old Beaux ARts and new US
Modernism. It was entirely in the pre CAD days -- that is, he may
realize his advantage if he is able to tell the differences in those
systems.

My feeling is that Steve is caught up in selling his baby: that he is
unable to recall the intricacies of the education he had; perhaps, like
most students, he was so caught up in his own attitude that he never
thought of the system itself, the system into which he was plugged,
except as it affected him (did I get "A"; then, why not?). And once he
became a teacher, he has said he was only interested in the CAD game,
not in the effects, one way or another, of FREE HAND DRAWING. Even if he
had had a chance to review the impact of drawing, he wouldn't have been
interested in it.

Now I will say again, Steve does have an exceptional design eye, and if
I am entirely wrong about him, THAT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE for students on
average. They will learn LESS design by going the easy route of CAD. I
mentioned in an earlier message that only a small percentage may expect
to do any good without learning to DRAW -- not draft, DRAW FREEHAND.

Unfortunately, far too many people who have gone the non-drawing route
will feel that they are fine designers. But they prefer to fool
themselves; and that's not difficult, because they never learned what is
good design anyway. (I will say this: If you know what is good design,
then most likely you have heard of the reputation of architecture at
UTA.)

No, I say adamantly, the person who fails to learn to draw (it doesn't
matter for what reason -- and by the way it does not address the issue
to talk about disabilities; to bring that up is introducing a fallacy
and makes what one says thereafter seem invalid) -- the one who fails to
learn drawing cannot express one's self in fashioning partis. And it is
not far fetched to say (thinking of the misleading "look ma, no hands"
comment) that designing is a physical process; it is best done with body
and mind combined. Indeed, I think one cannot design (on average, again)
without something of a physiological understanding, or feeling, about
the body involved.

One ought expect no more to design without caring about drawing than one
ought to expect a good golf swing without concern for the club. I know,
there are exceptions. Lee Trevino used to win pocket money at Tennison
Park Golf Links by dropping a ball into a sand trap, then stepping upon
it, and betting that he could drive it to the green 25 yards away (now
get this:) using a long necked Coke bottle! He is the exception. Very
few may expect to duplicate that feat, or learning to design without the
necessary preparation.

One final comment: Do not think that I am speaking of drawing as say,
that of Rembrandt. (I think his sepia sketches (cartoons) were even more
fantastic than his painting.) I speak of simply learning to draw,
adequately. Nine out of ten people, I say from experience, can learn to
draw sufficiently to be able to express their design work properly. I
have seen too many people with the will to try, learn how to express
themselves in ink contour drawings, who earlier were unable to draw a
chair. The tenth person who cannot learn, is unable to learn to draw
because they cannot see depth. Their world is flat. And that will
unfailingly describe their "design".
Without the hand eye combination, one's body fails to be engaged in the
process, and all we may expect from such disconnected work is vapid
results. Of course, those people are unlikely to ever understand that
their work is vapid, unless they are unusually unbiased concerning their
own products.

I say all this, NOT because I am polishing my own axe. I say it with
extreme conviction, yet dispassionately, in order to try to convince
someone out there that a methodical means for learning to design does
exist. It begins in drawing, so that one may learn to see that which one
has designed. Anything else puts it all into a crap shoot. The odds of
winning are very poor.

Ah me; this battle was always a difficult one to explain. I say, Just do
it, and learn.

Rick McBride